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Men Held in Beating Lived on the Fringes

Within two hours one night last week, Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., admitted two young men from different sides of a social and sexual chasm in the small city of Laramie, Wyo.

In one room lay Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old freshman at the University of Wyoming and a graduate of the American School in Switzerland, who had been robbed and severely beaten in an episode that the authorities say was at least partly linked to his sexual orientation.

Four rooms away lay one of Mr. Shepard's accused assailants, Aaron J. McKinney, a 22-year-old roofer who dropped out of high school. Mr. McKinney, the father of a new baby, had suffered a hairline fracture of the skull in an attack on two Hispanic men after Mr. Shepard's beating, the police say.

Mr. McKinney and a friend, Russell A. Henderson, have been charged with first-degree murder in the fatal beating of Mr. Shepard on the night of Oct. 6. Mr. Shepard was left tied to a ranch fence in near-freezing weather, in a case that has captured national attention for its brutality. It has also reinvigorated the debate about hate crimes, provoking comment from President Clinton and Wyoming's Governor.

The case also reveals much about Laramie, a college town where higher education provides the economic mainstay and the conservative ranching culture reigns, and where all of those involved in the Shepard case lived on the fringes.

Mr. McKinney, known around Laramie for his short temper and willingness to brawl, was awaiting sentencing for burglarizing $2,500 from a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant before Mr. Shepard's beating.

After the attack on Mr. Shepard, the Laramie police said, Mr. McKinney returned to town and picked a fight with two Hispanic youths who were walking down the street.

One of the youths, Emiliano Morales 3d, 19, recalled that a man, whom he later identified as Mr. McKinney, jumped him near a park just after midnight on Oct. 7. He said his friend Jeremy Herrara, 18, had tried to warn him of the impending attack.

''Jeremy yelled, 'He's got a gun!' '' Mr. Morales said, and then the assailant ''hit me in the head.''

''Jeremy ran up and hit him with a stick,'' he continued. ''and we took off.''

Mr. Morales received 21 staples to repair his cut scalp. No charges have been filed in that fight.

Like Mr. McKinney, Mr. Henderson dropped out of Laramie High School, taking jobs, and most recently, repairing roofs. By the time of his arrest last week, he had committed several driving offenses and had two convictions for drunken driving.

He lived with his girlfriend, Chasity V. Pasely, in a rented trailer.

''I perceived him as a follower,'' said Sherry Aanenson, who owned the couple's small trailer and charged them $340 a month rent. ''I have a hard time imagining him coming up with anything like this on his own. It seems extremely out of character, but sometimes people make really bad choices.''

If Russell Henderson was a quiet follower, Aaron McKinney was a young man with a short fuse.

About five years ago, his mother died and he came into a small inheritance, enough to allow him to buy a 1967 Mustang. After his arrest last December in the burglary of the fast-food store, he moved to Florida with his girlfriend, Kristen L. Price.

In July, their son, Cameron, was born and they returned to Laramie, renting a first-floor apartment in a rundown wooden house. Ms. Price, also a dropout from Laramie High, took care of their baby full time.

On Monday, Travis Brin, a high school acquaintance of Mr. McKinney, told The Rocky Mountain News how the volatile young man once ''flipped out'' in a Laramie bar on encountering the doctor who had treated his mother. ''He was yelling at this guy, blaming him for his mother's death,'' Mr. Brin recalled. ''They almost called the cops to get him out of there. After that, I didn't want to be around him much.''

At one point in recent months, Mr. McKinney took a conflict-resolution class in Laramie. Friends of Mr. Henderson have said that he did not seem to have any animosity to homosexuals. But Brendan Murphy, an acquaintance of Mr. McKinney, said Mr. McKinney had expressed prejudiced toward both homosexuals and racial minorities.

Mr. Murphy told the News: ''He'd say really ignorant things.''

On the night of Oct. 6, Mr. Henderson and his high school buddy were cruising Laramie in a pickup truck borrowed from Mr. McKinney's father, Bill. Stopping by the Fireside, a campus hangout, they pooled their money to pay $5.50 for a pitcher of beer, paying in coins. It was in the bar that they met Mr. Shepard.

After beating Mr. Shepard and stealing his wallet, the two men returned to their homes and made anti-gay remarks to their girlfriends, Laramie police say. The two women, police say, invented an alibi for their boyfriends and dumped Mr. Henderson's clothing in a trash bin and his bloody shoes in a storage shed at the apartment of Ms. Pasely's mother.

''He was crying, and he kept throwing up,'' Ms. Price said in an interview with the ABC News program ''20-20.'' ''He just came in and hugged me, and said, 'I've done something horrible. I deserve to die.' ''

Ms. Price and Ms. Pasely have been arraigned on charges of being accessories after the fact. If convicted they face penalties of up to three years in jail and up to $3,000 in fines.

Their boyfriends have been charged with kidnapping, aggravated robbery and first-degree murder. Bond has been suspended until prosecutors decide whether to ask for the death penalty.

Ms. Price has told reporters that her boyfriend said the primary motive was robbery, but that he was also embarrassed when Mr. Shepard made a pass at him at the Fireside.

''He said that a guy walked up to him, and said that he was gay and wanted to get with Aaron and Russ,'' Ms. Price recalled to ''20-20.'' The two men beat him, she said, ''to teach him a lesson not to come on to straight people.''

Two months before he was killed, Mr. Shepard was involved in another altercation, with a man who claims that he struck him because he had flirted with him. The kind of violence in this case fits national patterns in anti-gay crimes, several experts in the field say.

''Once someone is labeled as homosexual, any glance or conversation by that person is perceived as sexual flirtation,'' Karen Frankin, a forensic psychologist, wrote in a recent paper. ''Flirtation, in turn, is viewed as a legitimate reason to assault.''

''Self defense'' from homosexual overtures, ideological opposition to homosexuals, thrill seeking and peer approval were the main justifications for assaulting homosexuals given in an anonymous survey conducted by Dr. Franklin conducted recently.

Young men account for 80 percent to 90 percent of people arrested for ''gay bashing'' crimes, said Valerie Jenness, a sociology professor who teaches a course on hate crimes at the University of California in Irvine. ''This youth variable tells us they are working out identity issues, making the transition away from home into adulthood.''

Many communities foster the problem, these researchers said, by signaling to young people that gays are fair targets for attack. In Laramie, for example, a billboard message was altered in December 1993 to proclaim, under a brace of pistols, ''Shoot a gay or two.'' At a time when Mr. McKinney and Mr. Henderson were teen-agers at Laramie High, the message greeted hundreds of drivers daily for over a month, until a visiting gay activist erased it.

''The impact of a billboard like that is far more significant than people might imagine,'' said Brian Levin, director of the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College, in Pomona, N.J. ''Young people are a sponge for rhetoric that goes through society, from a billboard to the dinner table. These young men could actually believe they are doing the bidding of their overall community.''

-------------------- Sorority Suspended for Float

FORT COLLINS, Colo., Oct. 15 (AP) -- A sorority at Colorado State University that co-sponsored a parade float that mocked homosexuals after the fatal beating of a gay college student has surrendered its charter. The scarecrow with the words ''I'm Gay'' appeared on a float sponsored by the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and the Alpha Chi Omega sorority. Pi Kappa Alpha officials said the float had been vandalized and the anti-gay epithet added to the figure.